Gillard as a fellow lawyer should know better...even Judges know when politics is been played.

PM's attack on High Court a political defence of failed Malaysian asylum-seeker swap deal

• COMMENT Dennis Shanahan
• From: The Australian
• September 01, 2011 2:22PM

JULIA Gillard has launched an extraordinary attack on the High Court of Australia as her political defence in the wake of its rejection of her Malaysian asylum-seeker swap deal.

The Prime Minister, acting on preliminary and oral legal advice, has decided to blame the High Court for a "missed opportunity" to send a message to people-smugglers in the region.

Locked into a political corner, she's decided to blame the referee in a high-stakes game designed to deflect criticism from herself and her government.

Gillard has also put the court's legal role into the frame for political policy decisions and pointed to inconsistencies in Chief Justice Robert French's previous judgments and yesterday's landmark decision. It's not the High Court's job to pick up on "missed opportunities".

Faced with the prospect that all offshore processing of illegal boat arrivals may now be thrown into question, forcing a massive retreat in Labor policy, Gillard has hit out at the nation's highest court and accused the Labor-appointed Chief Justice of making contradictory judgments on asylum-seekers.

"The current Chief Justice of the High Court, his honour Mr Justice French, considered comparable legal questions when he was a judge of the Federal Court and made different decisions to the one that the High Court made yesterday," she said today.

Again, based on preliminary advice, Gillard has struck out early and hard in an effort to control the damage to her reeling government.

In the end an attack on the High Court and the Chief Justice may make a dire situation even worse, if that's possible.

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